Yup! The thread was not intended to determine the net advantages or disadvantages of nuclear power. I suspect that's an interesting balancing act. The question was more along the lines of how people in democracies will react to plans for additional nuclear power generation in the future.

Personally, I suspect the backlash is going to be enormous, but I was interested in finding out if other members had a similar opinion.

Geezer, to ask about peoples reactions and views, disregarding what the question is about won't tell you much. I think JB is right, nuclear waste is a real problem, although very few want to know about it. And so far it's been more or less hidden from sight, as in Fukushima, but i think the waste is a serious subject, In fact getting more serious every day.

The question is about public opinion, not the merits or demerits of nuclear power generation. It's obvious that there has been a major backlash against nuclear power generation in Germany following recent events in Japan. I expect there will be a similar reaction throughout the World.

The question is, do you think this will be a short, or long-term, public reaction?

Well, nothing we humans do is long term :) As far as I've seen? So I'm pretty sure it's short term. And I'm not saying that we can stop going nuclear either. It's two different questions. One is about the energy needs assuming the population growth of around 9.2 billion, in 2050. It will escalate.

Assume one of two scenarios. Either that Global warming becomes as we've seen historically, when Earth got around three degrees warmer, somewhere I saw a figure that at that time the oceans raised about 7 meters. And that's a geological fact as I understood it, not discussing why now. So we will need a lot of power, fast, at the same time as those nuclear plants placed at coastlines will have to be moved. On the other hand, if this scenario comes true there will most probably be a massive population reduction due to starvation, epidemics and mass migrations. There are already plans resting for this scenario both in USA and Europe, including the possibility of wars escalating as people find themselves forced to move. Add to that the increased instability in the Arctic if that becomes ice free and you can start to exploit it. And that exploitation will come, whatever is being negotiated now. Even China is disposing itself there. All that together is naturally a worst case scenario, and with it a extreme economical decline combined with a lot of patriotism from all nations involved and our democracy backing off in favor of a more military establishment as unrest escalates.

A better scenario is one where we only see the ocean raising some meter world wide. That won't be equally distributed though, and as droughts and famines comes we will still see people migrating, but my guess is that we will be able to handle it. In that case some nuclear plants will have to move I expect with the other getting walled in. And then the need for power will be greater and we will see more nuclear plants. People are not steered by long term planning, in the end we're all steered by our needs. and those needs and expectations are higher in industrialized countries than in our poorer unindustrialized neighbors.

The absolute best scenario is naturally the 'conspiracy theory' :) where all climatologist's becomes the villains in some cheap soap opera. And where the white man once more can go out to save the heathen from their disruptive behavior and practices :) ah, that was a joke.

The waste is a problem any which way, but with moving our plants we might get a chance to make them safer too. And develop what we got firstly instead of trying designs we never used before.

I think we will see a great amount of public resistance to building any new nuclear power stations for the next twenty or so years. Just my personal opinion of course. We'll have to wait and see, but the events in Japan are doing little to instil a sense of security, and the situation seems to get worse every day.

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